THE LAST RIVER MILE

“The fastest, easiest way to galvanize people together is to give them something to hate.” – Bill Posegate (among others)

My dad was a veteran, who loved God and who loved his country. (In that order, with the latter answerable to the former.) He grew up in the shadow of the Second World War, and he believed in the power of a free democracy to withstand unchecked authoritarianism. From him I learned to value a society in which differing opinions are not only accepted, but expected. Dad liked the idea of political opponents fiercely defending their views, but respecting each other as “worthy adversaries.”

One thing my late father would not tolerate is opposing parties labeling each other as “the enemy within.” He would have pointed out to me how many totalitarian regimes in history have gained popular power by pinpointing a particular group or viewpoint as “the enemy within.” To be sure, any nation has real threats within its borders, bent on that nation’s downfall. But I fear the line is blurring between that small number, and the vast number of citizens who love the United States of America but who do not agree with an administration at any given point in history. Political opposition and “enemy of the nation” have become interchangeable. That, my father pointed out, is dangerous territory.

Those of us who have chosen to be Jesus-followers have forfeited the right to demonize opposition. We are under the mandate of Matthew 5:43-44. Hard as this is, we have neighbors to love more than we have enemies to defeat.

Any human movement built on vanquishing enemies is doomed to die. Pick any empire on earth built on force at any point in history: The Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Han Dynasty, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans, the Aztecs, the British Empire, the Third Reich, etc., etc. Where are they all now? They have drifted off into the increasingly waning dust of historical record. But the empire built on love, the empire forgiving the crucifiers, the empire that doggedly sees every human being as worthy of the life, death, resurrection, and promised return of the God’s own Son refuses to die.

That doesn’t happen by labeling opponents as “the enemy within.”

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.